A Trip Up Mount Graham

Going to get back into this blogging thing again.  I have a good reason to post today. I finally got a trip up to the Mount Graham International Observatory today. Mount Graham is near Safford, Arizona and home to some great telescopes.

The drive up the mountain is pretty long with lots of switchbacks. You aren’t going to make good time up there.  However you are treated to the changing vegetation as you ascend to 10,500 feet and a nice collection of animals.

The first telescope we stopped at was the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope (VATT), affectionately known as the Pope Scope. The VATT is a relatively modest 1.8 meter diameter telescope but broke new ground, particularly with its f/1.0 mirror, ushering in an era of fast telescope mirror fabrication.  Here is the VATT.Next up was the Sub-Millimeter Telescope (SMT), a radio telescope. The SMT is in a dome and the dish sits right next to the edge of the dome make it virtually impossible to get a decent picture unless the dome is open (which it wasn’t).

Of course the big boy on the block is the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT). The LBT features two 8.4 meter mirrors on a single mount. The light from these two massive mirrors can be combined to create the resolution of one telescope with a diameter of 22.8 meters if I remember correctly.  The observatory is active, but still has lots of work being done with the addition of new instruments and an adaptive optics system. Here’s a panoramic look from the mirror level.

You can see one mirror.  The other mirror is on the far side behind the equipment in the middle. The best pic I got from the floor had me in  it as  scale model.

The mirror you saw in the previous picture is being supported by those silver supports on the left. The whole telescope can rotate and tip up and down.  The scope is so well balanced, the whole thing can be moved by a 4 horsepower motor.

Now I am a fan of the quirky. Moths are very common up on Mount Graham. They have a homemade moth catcher…

That’s just what it looks like.  The light attracts the moths and the big fan sucks them down into the garbage can.

Finally, I will leave you with a pic showing how close we came to losing the observatory.  A fire came within 500 feet in the summer of 2004.  You can see where the fire advanced to before it was stopped.

Rio Got the Sunrise Backwards

Those of us who really know the sky notice little things in movies and television shows that might just slide past most people.  I saw the movie Rio yesterday and noticed they had a little issue with sunrise.

Sunrise is a little different when you are south of the equator.  First, let’s take a look a a northern hemisphere sunrise. I am biased, I live in the northern hemisphere.  Here is a time lapse of a sunrise in Vancouver.

This is a nice (but random) video I found on Youtube.  Notice how the Sun does not rise straight up, but rather up and to your right (south) when looking east. Now let’s contrast that to a sunrise taken from Rio (isn’t youtube grand?)

Note how the Sun rises in the east and moves to your left (north) when you are in Rio!  As you have probably figured out by now, the time lapse sunrise they showed in the movie Rio showed the Sun moving up and to the right (south)as it would north of the equator.

Sometimes movie and television producers get lazy and will film a sunset and run it backwards to illustrate a sunrise.  That’s not so good either. When the Sun sets in the northern hemisphere, it sets down and to the right (north).  If you run this backwards, the Sun will appear to rise up and to the left (again north since the Sun rises in the east) which suddenly transports all the action to the southern hemisphere!

I know some people might think I am nit-picking a movie about talking birds and my expectations for accurate science shouldn’t be too high. But would it have killed a major plot point for them to get this one right? For sky watchers, these things jump out at us. So just get it right for crying out loud!

GLOBE At Night 2011

I have blogged for several years now about the annual citizen science  light pollution measurement campaign GLOBE at Night. The 2011 campaign takes place in two parts.  The first one starts tomorrow (February 21st) and runs though Mach 6th.  After March 6th the Moon interferes too much for a couple of weeks.  The second campaign is from March 22nd to April 4th for the northern hemisphere (March 24th to April 6th for the southern hemisphere…investigate the positions and elevations of the Moon north and south of the equator in late March/early April to find out why the dates vary a couple of days).

Okay, first, the idea is simple.  Go outside after it’s dark and find the constellation Orion. Find the latitude and longitude of where you are with a GPS unit or a website like Google Earth.  The light pollution data consists of matching what you see in the sky to one of seven magnitude charts. Pick the one that matches what you see best and enter it into our database online. Multiple observations are encouraged from different points around town.  I take bike rides at night after sunset to record data.  Each night I ride a different direction and take lots of data around my area of the city AND get exercise at the same time!

For the late March campaign, you might notice Orion is getting a little low in the sky.  This year we are using Leo (northern hemisphere) and Crux (southern hemisphere) for the late march campaign.  Other than that, everything else is the same.

An added feature this year is the reporting page functions on mobile phones. If you use a web enabled cell phone, it will take the date, time and GPS coordinates from your cell phone to make your life even easier (the first time you use the site, you might get a message asking permission to access your phone’s GPS.  You will have to say yes for this feature to work).

Once you submit your data, you can go back and look at it on the map viewer.  You can zoom in all the way down to street level to see your observations.

Data from GLOBE at Night can  be used to raise awareness of light pollution issues.  The more data you have, the more research you can do.  In Tucson, GLOBE at Night data is being combined with Arizona Game and Fish Department data to look at the effects of light pollution on bats. Tucson had over 1000 points of data last year, so you need a lot of data to do this type of work, but it can be done.

We had 16,000 measurements last year, so that’s a big hill to climb.  I would love to see some cities give Tucson a run for its money in terms of number of observations.  Just a warning, we have our act together this year recruiting various community groups school classes, amateur astronomers and others to adopt streets and take multiple measurements along their designate street!  So bring it on!

Buckyballs in Space

Just a quick note that I should have posted yesterday.  The National Optical Astronomy Observatory is producing a podcast each month for the 365 Days of Astronomy podcast. Our podcasts will air on the 17th of each month. One part of my job is tracking down NOAO scientists to interview them for this project (the January episode was on the Galileoscope).

The February episode was posted yesterday and features an interview with NOAO astronomer Letezia Stanghellini about her research on Buckyballs in planetary nebula, titled Buckyballs in Space. Buckyballs are unique molecules made out of pure carbon that would look like a soccer ball if you magnified them. They are very strong with a lot of unique properties and potential applications in medicine.

I am working on the March edition today…stay tuned for more!

The Winter Solstice Lunar Eclipse

Every now and then you get a lunar eclipse on the winter solstice.  That’s just the way the geometry of the Earth/Moon/Sun system works out.  Lunar eclipses are a pretty and easy to observe phenomena.

A lunar eclipse happens when the Moon is on the opposite side of the Earth from the Sun and passes through Earth’s shadow.  Lunar eclipses only happen when there is a full Moon.  A lunar eclipse won’t happen every time there is a full Moon since the Moon’s orbit is inclined  to the plane of the solar system…in other words, the Moon will usually pass wither above or below Earth’s shadow.  Every now and then, everything lines up and you get the lunar eclipse.

This eclipse is well positioned for observers in North America, but you have to stay up a bit late. The penumbral eclipse starts at 1:29am eastern time.  The penumbral phase is usually not impressive as the Moon is passing through the outer part of Earth’s shadow and changes very little (although I have noticed the color of the Moon change from white to a pale yellow during this phase of the eclipse).  The ubmral phase starts at 1:32am EST.  That’s when you notice the dark part of Earth’s shadow starts covering the Moon.  At this point, it’s obvious something is going on.  Totality starts at 2:40am EST and mid-eclipse is at 3:16am EST.  Totality ends at 3:53am EST and the partial phases end at 5:01am EST.

During the total phases of the eclipse, you can usually still see the Moon as a deep red or orange color.  Sometimes it is fairly bright while others it almost disappears.  How bright it appears depends on lots of factors including how close to the center of the shadow the Moon passes and how much particulate matter is in Earth’s atmosphere.  With recent volcanic eruptions, it might be a bit darker of an eclipse than usual, but there is only one way to find out!

No telescope is required to watch the eclipse.  Binoculars and small telescopes provide good view.  Now just have to stock up on Red Bull to stay awake (or coffee for you coffee drinkers!)

Two Conjunctions and a Meteor Shower

Tonight is a great night to get outside and look up (assuming you are not in the cold party of the country!)  The early show starts right after sunset.  The first quarter Moon passes near Jupiter tonight (about six degrees away ballpark).  Find the Moon…the bright thing near it, that’s Jupiter.  If you have binoculars or a telescope, Jupiter’s moons are easily visible.

The real challenge occurs right after sunset.  Mercury and Mars are VERY low in the southwest.  You will need a good flat horizon, very clear skies and a sharp eye to catch them.  They are only one degree apart (about the width of your pinky held at arms length).  Here’s a chart to help, but you have only about 30 minutes after sunset before they are gone!

For the late night owls, one of the best meteor showers of the year, the Geminids, peaks tonight.  The Geminids are just as good if not better than the more famous Perseids in August.  They are also much colder for most of the northern hemisphere!  Although it is better to go out really late at night, due to Earth’s tilt, Gemini rises by 10pm local time over most of the continental U.S. meaning you can get good meteor counts earlier than for most showers.  Of course, you want to get rid of the light from that pesky Moon to get the best view.  The first quarter Moon sets around midnight local time.  The Geminids are fairly slow moving (as far as meteors go at least) and that makes them a little easier to observe.

The Geminids have a fairly broad distribution, so if you miss them tonight, there will still be quite a few around the next couple of nights as well.

So bundle up, get your hot chocolate on and check out the sky tonight.

Venus Passes Through Inferior Cojnunction

Venus passes between the Earth and the Sun tomorrow, October 29th.  We usually don’t see this phenomena as Venus is up during the day.  However, Venus does not pass directly between the Earth and Sun.  From our perspective, it passes slightly below the Sun.  The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) has a camera with a coronagragph (a little disk the blocks the Sun) and gives us a nice view.  Here is a pic from today.

Venus is the bright guy at the bottom.  The streak is due to the fact that Venus is so bright, it bleeds over into neighboring pixels.

Now the main reason I mention this is that next time Venus undergoes inferior conjunction, it will pass directly between the Earth and the Sun.  This is called a transit and will happen on June 5th/6th 2010 2012 (and I am telling you now, so no crazy people get to say in 2012 that no one predicted this before!)  With proper solar filters or a solar telescope, you can see the disk of Venus on the face of the Sun. For most of North America, the transit will be in progress at Sunset (you can find more info about what you can see from your location here).  We will see the first part but not the entire transit.  The last time this happened was in 2004 and the transit was in progress at Sunrise.  If you put the two together, I will have seen a whole transit!

Mark you calendars, because these are much more rare than you think.  They occur in pairs separated by 8 years.  After the 2012 transit, you have to wait until 2117 for the next one!

The 2011 Chandra Calendar

The Chandra X-Ray Space Telescope has just released its 20011 Calendar. Best part is its free and you can download it in various sizes.  In the olden days, you would have to take it to a professional printer, but now photo quality printers give many people the ability to print the wonderful images on these calendars at home (just be sure you have a lot of black ink handy!)

Chandra observes the universe in X-rays instead of visible light.  X-rays are much higher energy and the universe looks very different through X-ray eyes.  Chandra observes supernova remnants, active galaxies, neutron stars, hot gas clouds and other high energy objects.

January’s image of N49 is a good example of a supernova remnant.

This image is a composite of X-ray data from Chandra and a visible light image from Hubble.  The expanding supernova remnant is interacting with the surrounding gas giving rise to an intricate array of filaments.  The leftover neutron star is a soft gamma repeater, a neutron star that gives off low energy gamma rays (well, low energy for a gamma ray at least…they really are pretty energetic!)  The neutron star is the bright “star”toward the top of the image, just slightly left of center.  This explosion was not symmetric so the neutron star got blasted to the side.

So download the calendar…there are 11 more wonderful images and stories to go with this one.

Observe the Moon Tonight

Tonight is the first International Observe the Moon night.  The basic idea is to encourage everyone to go out and look at the Moon with whatever you have…your eyes, binoculars or a small telescope.  There are features visible with anything.

The Moon is waxing gibbous tonight, a good time to observe.  Really look along the terminator if you have binoculars or a telescope.  The terminators it the dividing line between the light and dark side of the Moon.  The Sun is rising on this part of the Moon and craters and mountains cast long shadows giving a nice 3D look to features along the terminator.

If you want to get a good map of the moon, try the Virtual Moon Atlas.  The Virtual Moon Atlas is a great (and free) program for Mac and Windows.  You can set you time and location and it will show you which features to look for on the Moon.  You can change the zoom level to see objects visible with the naked eye, binoculars, and telescopes.

So go out and observe the Moon!

Venus Meets Mars

I don’t know how many more planet pictures I will get in this series.  However, tonight Venus is meeting Mars as Saturn departs the scene.  The picture I selected tonight shows Venus just below the orangeish Mars as a plane flies just beneath Saturn.

Saturn will keep departing the scene stage right while Venus and Mars will slowly appear a little lower in the sky each evening as the slowly pull apart over the next few weeks.